Avatar‘s Other Advance: Totally Amazing Fake Explosions

The Industrial Light & Magic team that helped with Avatar‘s amazing visual effects harnessed past work creating water effects to produce more convincing explosions in James Cameron’s 3-D epic.

“We’ve done CG explosions in the past,” ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll told the Geek Gestalt blog, “but never with this level of realism, and never this close up.”

Instead of filming real explosions that were later sweetened with effects, ILM applied lessons about the visual behavior of fluids, learned during the making of Poseidon and Pirates of the Caribbean, to create believable explosions from scratch. “The same underlying engine is being used on this,” Knoll said. “The motion of the underlying gas is similar to the motion of fluids.”

The Geek Gestalt article reveals more about the ways the ILM visual effects team worked with Weta Digital to create Avatar‘s stunningly believable alien world, an immersive 3-D spectacle that must be seen in theaters to be truly appreciated. Reviews for the movie, which is probably the most expensive ever made, have been strong. Early estimates put Avatar on track to earn $73 million during its opening weekend, a record for a 3-D film.